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Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Motorola's third quarter: 4.8 million smartphones shipped

By | October 27, 2011, 1:14pm PDT

Summary: Motorola boasts mobile device sales figures, but specifics remain mysterious.

Following the announcement that Google is planning to buy it out, Motorola Mobility’s third quarter earnings results were shaky, at best.

Motorola Mobility reported a GAAP net loss of $32 million, or 11 cents a share (statement), which is actually an improvement from a year ago when those figures read as a net loss of $34 million, or $0.12 per share.

Non-GAAP earnings were 12 cents a share on a revenue of $3.3 billion. Wall Street was expecting Motorola Mobility to report third quarter earnings of 6 cents a share on $3.37 billion.

Smartphone shipments shined as 4.8 million smartphones units accounted for the total of 11.6 million mobile devices shipped during the third quarter. At least 100,000 Xoom tablets also shipped during Q3 2011, but that was as specific as it got when Motorola announced earnings on Thursday.

That’s a bit surprising considering Motorola had a number of notable releases during the third quarter of 2011 — especially the 4G-powered Droid Bionic.

Motorola Mobility chairman and CEO Sanjay Jha explained in prepared remarks:

Our third quarter revenues in Mobile Devices increased by 20 percent, driven by continued strong growth in international markets. With the recent launch of our iconic Motorola RAZR, we now have several 4G LTE devices in our portfolio. Our Home business is creating innovative solutions for our customers, taking leadership in the transition to all-IP networks, and delivering solid levels of profitability. We are also excited about the proposed merger with Google and continue to make progress to close this transaction.

For the fourth quarter, Wall Street is expecting earnings of 44 cents a share on revenue of $4.01 billion.

Motorola, on the other hand, did not provide an outlook for the fourth quarter. Additionally, the Droid smartphone maker will not be hosting a conference call in conjunction with its third-quarter results this time around.

Key points:

  • Motorola announced a Xoom Familiy Edition tablet, the Atrix 2 4G smartphone, and MOTOACTV, a compact fitness performance tracker and smart music player.
  • The Razr phone is making a comeback as part of the Droid smartphone series.

By the numbers:

  • Q3 2011 GAAP results include approximately $18 million of expenses attributable to the planned merger with Google.
  • Mobile Devices net revenues were $2.4 billion in Q3 2011, up 20 percent compared to Q3 2010
  • Home segment net revenues in the third quarter were $825 million, down 10 percent compared with Q3 2010

Related:

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Topics

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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RE: Motorola's third quarter: 4.8 million smartphones shipped
fgjheyr 29th Oct
http://591.hk.cn/bg1
...00....000...
So, why not ditch other services that are not contributing to revenue and concentrate on smartphones?
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@tatiGmail Android OEMs are fighting for the scraps at the bottom of the barrel. MotoMob spent many years in the red and it barely making any money today.

In fact, if you RTFA you could have seen that MotoMobo had a $32 million net loss this past quarter.
@wackoae
I totally agree with you.
They will get better when they learn how to launch a stable product...

Droid X2 launched with 2.2 and had very poor support for Tegra 2... As a result the thing was flakey and buggy in every phase.

Once updated to 2.3.3 the phone performed great in most areas, they still had a few issues like stuttering during music...

2.3.4 update came (all within 4 months) and the only issue that remained was the stupid Tethering bug as Verizon modified the code for the hotspot from the default Google code and that caused problems.

Anyway, the bottom line is, release your next phone running like the Droid X2 with 2.3.4 and you will see better results!
Worldwide they have no where to play now between zte and huawei at the low end and nokia in the mid/high end. They have only the US market for another year until Nokia slaughters them there too.
Ouch! Shipped 100k tablets. That means they sold 20k. Why do they even bother?
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Android poisoned chalice
global.philosopher Updated - 27th Oct
What seemed like a panacea for the company actually will end up being their fast track to oblivion. They have nothing to offer the handset market other than an ordinary brand name. They are in a downward spiral with other handset makers toward razor thin margins. They were one of the first to jump on the Android bandwagon hoping to be a leader but are now being overrun by the other 37 OEM's.
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too early to tell
vpasman2@... 28th Oct
For the first time in a decade, Moto is starting to innovate, and this could eventually payoff . The synergies of working with Google could push the existing product line through the roof. One condition: Google has to replace the entire Moto mgmt structure. Unless that happens, GOOG just wasted $12B on patents
my neighbor's step-mother makes $80 an hour on the laptop. She has been fired from work for 5 months but last month her income was $9066 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Go to this site http://uuurl.net/x87p6

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